Outrage at guns for sterilisation policy

On the fringe of north India, five sweating men expertly scythe their way through a golden-green field of paddy. The air is thick with the whoosh of sharpened blades. Nearby, bullocks loll and veiled women walk carrying cowpats on their heads for use as fuel.

Beneath the rural idyll, however, lies a village in torment because of a radical new population control measure: guns for sterilisation.

Three months ago, officials in three districts of Uttar Pradesh, India's largest and most populous state, announced that to obtain a single-barrel shotgun, two people would need to be sterilised; for a revolver licence, the price would be five.

What happened to the quintet of farm workers perspiring in the fields around the village of Shashitanda appears to be the unhappy result of the radical policy. In late July, a rich farmer seeking a gun licence is said to have had all five forcibly sterilised at a nearby clinic.

Jagdish Singh, 20, shifting nervously in front of assembled villagers, claims he went along with the farmer because he was offered work cutting grass at 50 rupees (60p) a day. "[Instead] I was taken to hospital and given a green pill which I was told was to protect against malaria. I don't remember anything else until I woke up the next day in pain."

Jagdish, an unmarried labourer, was held hostage after the operation in the farmer's house, and only released when the rest of the villagers turned up to rescue the five men. "My life is over," he said. "I have no children. How can I become a man again, everyone knows I have had this done to me?"

All five men, four of whom have children, have complained to police and registered a case with a local lawyer but say little has happened as a result.

"My wife is very angry with me, she scolds me day and night. What can I do? I have been cheated for a gun," says Preetam Singh, who also claims he was operated upon without his consent.

Avatar Singh, the farmer accused by the five, agreed he had wanted a gun but denied he had forced anybody to undergo the operations. "I did not do anything wrong. The matter is now closed," he said.

Population remains a pivotal issue for India, the world's largest democracy, where there is an increase of 20 million people each year. India expects to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by the middle of the century.

Uttar Pradesh, of all the nation's states, sits on top of the demographic explosion. It crams 170 million people - more than Russia - into a space the size of Britain. The state, largely rural, contains a tenth of the world's poor and half of its female adult workforce cannot read or write.

Sharp divide

India's latest census revealed a sharp divide between economically advanced southern states and poorer northern ones. Whereas the former revealed a sharp decrease in the rate of population growth in the last decade, the hugely populous states in the north registered rises.

The spectre of coercive sterilisation evokes dark memories for India. In the mid-1970s, the country's then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, suspended democracy - imposing press censorship and imprisoning political opponents - for 21 months. During this time, her ambitious son, Sanjay, organised a nationwide compulsory sterilisation campaign aimed at lowering the birthrate. The campaign, which mandated vasectomies for men with families of two or more children, met with widespread fear and resistance. Thousands were forcibly sterilised.

Uttar Pradesh's population policy calls for 930,000 sterilisations this year. It has been backed by $360m of aid money from USAid, the American government's donor agency.

Campaigners say the money would be better spent raising educational standards, encouraging the use of contraception and setting up an efficient public health system. "Sterlisation is an extremely invasive procedure, especially for women," says Jashodhara Dasgupta of Healthwatch, which campaigns on public health issues in Uttar Pradesh. "It is carried out here in unhygienic conditions often under poor medical supervision. Yet it is being promoted while contraceptives like the diaphragm are being withdrawn. The whole thrust of the policy is that we have to stop poor people from reproducing."

But officials say they only manage to meet half the annual sterilisation target and the state must reduce fertility with further incentives. With half a million pending applications for firearm licences in Uttar Pradesh, the upshot is the new "guns for sterilisation" population policy.

The new directive has been condemned by critics as encouraging gun culture in a state that already accounts for half of India's firearm murders. It is fairly common in Uttar Pradesh to see men strolling around with rifles slung over their shoulders or revolvers hung from their waists.

In the northern town of Lakhimpur, rows of gun shops sell pistols and double-barrelled shotguns for a few hundred pounds. Shop owners say there are two main reasons for the gun culture: the emergence of weapons as a status symbol and deteriorating law and order.

"I decided to get a gun after my neighbour and his family were killed by robbers a while ago," he said. "If you have money you are a target around here."

Administrators remain unapologetic, pointing out that a carrot-and-stick approach has long been practiced in Uttar Pradesh. For years, poor people who are sterilised receive priority for houses, small loans and extra rations of essential items like sugar.

"We have to meet our [sterilisation] goals. The target in this area alone is 18,000 and so far we only have 3,000 sterilisations," said Iqbal Hussain, chief medical officer of Lakhimpur district. "This is a healthy incentive scheme no different to when we offer extra bags of sugar or cash to people to have operations."